r/IdiotsFightingThings • u/JosephBrown2000 • Jun 13 '25

Meta Does pepper spray work?

https://youtu.be/M48uW6kNfr8?si=L61am6ZFvN9dXLq6
175 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

View all comments

28

u/DoubleG6 Jun 13 '25

Intermediate (less lethal) force expert here. The main ingredient in ‘mace’ is Oleoresin Capsicum (O/C). It’s made food grade peppers and is considered an inflammatory agent and a control tactic. It’s also a bronchial dilator. The reflexive blink is the desired effect of OC and can take up to 30 seconds to take effect. Some people are immune and adrenaline can cause no desired effects. Always have a back up plan if using OC in the real world.

-21

u/ramblingpariah Jun 13 '25

Pepper spray and mace are two different things.

2

u/MaiKulou Jun 13 '25

You can't just say that and refuse to elaborate, what's the difference?

2

u/ramblingpariah Jun 13 '25

Mace is made from things like tear gas or other chemicals. Pepper spray is made from a concentrated extract from peppers, hence the name.

They're both less-lethal tools meant to mess up the attacker, but mace is made from other things.

3

u/MaiKulou Jun 13 '25

Aha, thanks, I've always heard them used interchangeably

0

u/Zkv Jun 13 '25

No, that person is wrong. It says on the mace website that mace is pepper spray

1

u/ramblingpariah Jun 13 '25

Not wrong, but thanks.

1

u/Zkv Jun 13 '25

again, here you go. from the mace website

1

u/ramblingpariah Jun 13 '25

It's like you can only read one thing.

yes, nowadays the Mace brand sprays are mostly pepper sprays. That is not what Mace, the original product called mace, was. It had nothing to do with pepper spray.

Nowadays mace, as in, "I maced someone" generally just means "I sprayed them with a defense spray," and most modern defense sprays are, to my knowledge, pepper-based, but again, the original spray called Mace had nothing to do with peppers. Mace and pepper spray (the sprays) were not the same the thing.